Thought I'd start off by saying I still think epidurals are the way forward :) They certainly have their place. I spent nearly 12 hours just on entonox and TENS, and not dilating particularly quickly. Once I'd got past 6cm the midwife was happy for me to go for an epidural because I just wasn't getting any further dilated, and was reaching the end of what I could endure with the contractions. The consultant came and checked and decided we needed to progress the labour and the only way for that was the oxytocin drip - which would cause contractions far stronger than I could cope with without an epidural.
I was the 1 in 100 case that suffered a double tap during the epidural. This is when the epidural needle punctures the spinal space as well as the epidural space and causes problems. The symptoms are incapacitating headaches - I understand what migraine sufferers go through now. These headaches started the friday morning when I tried to get up and couldn't. They would hit me instantly when I sat up or tried to stand up, and would go away fairly quickly when I lay down again. I managed to go and see Ben in Special Care (SCBU) once, but couldn't hold him because the headaches were crippling me.
Ben was out of SCBU after 24 hours, and on Friday morning the midwife came along just before breakfast and told me Ben was crying for me and that he needed feeding (they'd been feeding him through a tube). I almost cried because of the thought of trying to stand up to go and see him and feed him through the headache was awful. Then they came back trundling him in his little cot and said they thought it was unfair to expect me to get up and come through so they brought him to me :) and THEN they said that I could keep him as he was being discharged from SCBU!
I'd still go for it even knowing what I've been through since. Tell you what though - the best thing has been the caffeine therapy. It's been hilarious. I had 3 cans of coke in quick succession yesterday morning, and not much breakfast, and had caffeine overdose - major shaking, chatterbox, hyper - brilliant!! So once the headaches have finally gone, which we're expecting to take around 5-6 weeks (they do go gradually) I'll have to be treated for caffeine addiction ;)
Small price to pay eh!
We finally got home last night, and today my major achievement has been to get downstairs. It's amazing how much strength in your legs you lose through a week of being pretty much confined to bed.
Ben on the other hand is doing fabulously, he has no problems latching on for breastfeeding, he knows exactly what he wants and how to get it, I'm hardly having to do anything. He's alert and beautiful and only has screaming fits when we change him. Oh and he's a sneaky wee-er. None of this fountain effect that baby boys are supposed to have. Oh no. He waits until you turn your back and just lets it flow all over himself and his clothes and the changing mat and you don't realise until you pick him up and wonder why everything's wet.
Midwife came and checked us both this morning and she's happy with how everything is progressing - she checked through our postnatal notes and apart from being slightly concerned that someone had appeared to have written that I'd lost 7500ml blood during the blood (that's 14 pints, and would have seen me in intensive care.....) - until she realised that actually what they'd written was >500ml. Handwriting. Dangerous thing - especially in the medical profession.....
Anyway apart from all that I'm still smiling, we had a laugh today which nearly went critical - I got stuck on the bed desperate for a wee, and Steve was stuck under the cot trying to plug an extension lead in but his head and shoulders are bigger than the space under the cot and it was going up and down as he was breathing and so he couldn't come and help me and then we both started laughing... and laughing when you are stuck and need of a wee is REALLY not what you want to be doing!!!!
I'll try and update more again tomorrow, but I think that'll do for now. Time for chocolate pudding and changing bottoms and feeding and bedtime.....
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